Theory of the Literary Text

 

General information

Code: 

10735

Main Scientific area: 

• Literary Studies

Regime: 

Half-yearly

ECTS:

7.5

Teaching type: 

On-site

Language of instruction: 

Portuguese

Course Load

Autonomous work: 

180 hours

Classes: 

30 hours – Seminar

Objectives of education

This seminar is a major cornerstone on the programme, by providing transversal critical paradigms: new ways of literary historiography; fundamental debates on contemporary critical theory; cultural, post-colonial, post-modern studies; feminism, gender and interarts found on the global world.

Key learning outcomes

– Identify fundamental debates on contemporary critical theory.
– Contextualize recent contributes of literary criticism on a global world.
– Understand the change of paradigm of text as “object” and of literary materiality.
– Understand questions of cosmopolitanism and multiculturality.
– Understand questions raised by post-colonial, post-modern studies, feminism, cultural studies and interarts.
– Acquisition of critical research methodology on the area.

Program summary

1. Understand the importance of paradigm change on literary studies on the global world.
2. Understand the notion of geographic imaginary and its implications on the configuration of the literary space.
3. Raise awareness towards the constructed character of the multiple literary spaces built, in historic terms and according to the adopted scale of analysis.
4. Discover some of the new means of literary historiography, within the scope of comparative literature and the emerging global literature.
5. Identify and contextualize the fundamental debates on contemporary critical theory.
6. Understand questions raised by post-colonial, post-modern studies, feminism and gender studies, cultural studies and interarts.
7. Acquisition of critical research methodology on the above-mentioned domains.

Essential bibliography

Barthes, Roland (1982). Image, Music, Text, Glasgow: Fontana.

Eagleton, Terry (1983). Literary Theory, Oxford: Blackwell.

Jay, Paul (2010). Global Matters: The Transnational Turn in Literary Studies, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Wallis, Brian & Tucker, Marcia (1991). Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation, New York: The New Museum of Contemporary Art.

Teaching methods

Seminar regimen based on previously selected bibliography and distributed to students; discussion of theoretical texts and case study analysis; project work with oral presentations focused on written texts, images and/ or movies.

Assessment methods

Based on the seminar regimen of the course unit, assessment will be accomplished through the students’ presentations focusing on specific points of the programme and a written essay to be produced at the end of the seminars about a previously agreed theme.